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Docta Ignorantia LXXVII Memorandum To The Rector/Vestry: Church and the Delivery of Grace This memo will be unpopular. It's occasion is the watch change the Vestry is obliged to undertake -- too early, I might point out. When the German pastors signed the oath to Hitler and the Vatican aided the Holocaust and other atrocities -- as it continues to do -- the world saw that the organization of the delivery of Grace which had obtained as the Church for over a millennium had come to an end. Circumstances differ and change and the organization of the delivery of Grace differs and changes with them. Because of different circumstances, we have several religions, to accommodate times and tastes. However, within each religion, the organization of the delivery of Grace changes as circumstances do, as well. The means of the delivery of Grace most of us grew up with have been diminishing in effectiveness for 60 or more years. Their soteriological puissance may be compared with a fan that is turned off: the blades slow to a stop gradually, giving the impression the fan is still on when in fact it has been shut off and is merely decelerating to a stop. With one exception, all activities at St. Thomas Church are soteriologically infecund, hollow eggs, or in common parlance, bogus. Music is done as well or better -- and certainly more happily -- commercially. Welfare is conducted by government or task-oriented private agencies. Hand-holding is done at our athletic/social clubs. And the preaching and ritual of the church (Word and Sacrament) are expanded to comprise the ordinary living of life. Worship and service occurring at St. Thomas Church are soteriologically infecund, habits of nostalgia, a waste of time, money and energy that could be terminated immediately with immediate improving effects in our community, nation and world. The one activity at St. Thomas Church that is soteriologically fecund, delivering Grace, is the day school. Teaching the young is delivering Grace. Duty is God, work is worship. This is our watchword that identifies the organization of the delivery of Grace for hundreds of years forward. Let the day school have the entire St. Thomas Church campus with one proviso: that the present or a smaller sanctuary be established and maintained by the Vestry as a Prayer Hall for the adherents of all religions. There is no need for services of worship on any day(s). Indeed, these are bogus unless conducted by a Sage, who would do so only periodically and usually not in public -- nor in any fashion familiar to most. Let the Sanctuary be a Prayer Hall for humanity. Let icons of at least the five major religions be enshrined there along with venerations of humanity's spiritual leadership. Do we need a Rector ... or a Bishop? Only if he or she earns their living outside of the episcopacy. An Episcopal officer living off the laity could not be a guide of souls during this era's organization of the delivery of Grace. The evidence is staring us in the face. Grace is being delivered in the workaday world. The world is the church. And Grace is organized accordingly, as the world's own lineaments. It is time to stand tall. The world has come of age.
Adwaitha Hermitage
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